"Enthralling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peanuts were easy to nip with the tongs, but the big English walnuts, or queer-shaped Madeira nuts were very difficult. Great delicacy of touch was necessary, and the children found the new game enthralling. ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... dainties. And the workman dwells in a borderland, and is always within sight of those cheerless regions where life is more difficult to sustain than worth sustaining. Every detail of our existence, where it is worth while to cross the ocean after pie and pudding, is made alive and enthralling by the presence of genuine desire; but it is all one to me whether Croesus has a hundred or a thousand thousands in the bank. There is more adventure in the life of the working man who descends as a common solder into the battle of life, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... two younger men of literary pursuits and irregular habits—had a gift of charming irrelevance, and was able to combine allusions to Mr. Perkins's orderly life and the amatory tendencies of a new cook in a mosaic of enthralling interest. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... while foreshadowing plainly, you must not forestall your effect. One of the most important elements of playlet writing is to let your audience guess what is going to happen—but keep them tensely interested in how it is going to happen. This is what creates the playlet's enthralling power—suspense. ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... thoughts the Stream flowed on In foamy agitation; And slept in many a crystal pool For quiet contemplation: No public and no private care The freeborn mind enthralling, We made a day of happy hours, Our happy ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... his forbear. During that first period of his business career which had been called his early bad manner, he had been little more than a gambler of genius, his hand against every man's—an infant prodigy—who brought to the enthralling pursuit of speculation a brain better endowed than any opposed to it. At St Helena it was laid down that war is une belle occupation; and so the young Manderson had found the multitudinous and complicated dog-fight of the Stock ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... attend its execution; repelled by that appearance of insincerity and shallowness of tone, which seems its inevitable drawback. For the mind of the reader, always bent to pick up clews, receives no impression of reality or life, rather of an airless, elaborate mechanism; and the book remains enthralling, but insignificant, like a game of chess, not a work of human art. It seemed the cause might lie partly in the abrupt attack; and that if the tale were gradually approached, some of the characters ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... more seasonable mood for reading the book which, in common with every one who had the least leaning towards the romantic, I at that time carried about in my pocket,—I mean Schiller's "Ghost-seer." I read and read, and my imagination grew ever more and more excited. I came to the marvellously enthralling description of the wedding feast at Count ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... deserve. "The Foundation of Bunkers," "A Defence of Philosophic Divots" and "Wood-wind and Brassies" should be read by all who are interested in belles lettres. And his latest volume of essays deals, I believe, with subjects so widely diverse and yet so enthralling as "Booty and the Criticism of Booty," "Trotsky's View of Russian World Policy," "Quizzical Research" and "The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... again to the enthralling page. "The student should lay open the theoracic cavity of the rabbit and dissect away the thymous gland and other tissues which hide the origin of the great vessels; so as ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... Mrs. Levitt, just to show he wasn't going to be dictated to, while the very fact that Corbett saw him as a figure of romantic adventure intensified the excitement of the pursuit. And though Elise, seen with certainty in the light of Corbett's intimations, was not quite so enthralling to the fancy as the Elise of his doubt, she made a more positive and formidable appeal to his desire. He loved his desire because it made him feel young, and, loving it, he thought he ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... COURT JOURNAL.—"A stupendous effort of imagination, and provides a narrative as enthralling and as realistic as anything ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... have had plenty of money, and she loved company and show; I cannot but think, therefore, that she had her design in choosing such a solitary place: its loveliness would subserve her intent of enthralling thoroughly heart and soul and brain of the fools she had in her toils. I doubt, however, if the fools were alive to any beauty but hers, if they were not dead to the wavings of God's garment about them. Was I ever truly aware of the presence of those peaks that dwelt alone with their whiteness ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... obsessed with the belief that a different and more terrible 1857 would dawn with the first big reverse in England's final war with her systematic, slow, sure, and certain rival, her deliberate, scientific, implacable rival, gave all his thoughts, abilities and time to the enthralling, engrossing game of ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... uncomfortable for others. And once she said to him: "You know, darling, I think it would be so nice for you to take a little interest in politics. They're very absorbing when you once get into them. I find my paper most enthralling. And it really ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... home by the sailors and the merchants; they were published in books of travel. Think you that our English blood had grown so sluggish that it could not be fired by such tales? Think you that the romance of the Colonies was one whit less enthralling than the romance of ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... was conscious of no depression from the prompt and decided refusal he had received. He was like a soldier in his first battle who has got a sharp wound which does not immediately cripple him, the perception of which is lost in the enjoyment of a new, keen, and enthralling experience. His thoughts were full of his own avowal, of the beauty of his young mistress, rather than of her coldness. Seeing his riding-whip in his hand, he stared at it an instant, and then at his boots, with a sudden recollection that he had intended to ride. He walked ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... to belief—taken any hold on it that bore comparison with that of Farmer Jones's Bull, for instance, or the visit of a real live Earl? Certainly not the former, while as for the latter it was at best a half-way grip between the two; perhaps farther, if anything, from the supreme Bull, the great enthralling interest that was to be vested in her letter to Dave, to be written at the next favourable climax of strength, nourished by repose. Some time in the morning—to-day she was far too tired to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... who do not know his splendid imagery, keen dissection of character, subtle views of humor, and enthralling power of narration, this work of Mr. Zangwill's should prove ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... unfettered poet or the lion unleashed. Shut your eyes as you listen and you can almost hear the music of mountain streams or the roar of rushing cataracts. In his great moments his eloquence is little short of enthralling, for it is filled with an inspired imagery. No living man surpasses him in splendour of oratorical expression. His speeches form a literature all ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... thousand years (900) before the foundation of Christianity. By the lips of a single bard, or of a series of bards, otherwise of public declaimers or reciters, the world was first familiarised with the many enthralling tales strung together in those peerless masterpieces. Again, at a period of very nearly five hundred years (484) before the epoch of the Redemption, the Father of History came to lay the foundation, as it were, of the whole fabric of prose literature ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... employed the very little while we were awake between bed and dinner in poring upon maps. I have always been fond of maps, and can voyage in an atlas with the greatest enjoyment. The names of places are singularly inviting; the contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling to the eye; and to hit, in a map, upon some place you have heard of before makes history a new possession. But we thumbed our charts on these evenings with the blankest unconcern. We cared not a fraction for this place or that. We stared at the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and modernization of Diana, Atalanta, Cinderella, and Rosalind; but even in the typewritten page it was amazingly alive and well calculated to evoke tears and laughter. That a play so enthralling should be buried in a safety-vault was not to be thought of, and I sat down and wrote Searles a long letter demanding that he at once forget the lost star for whom he had written the piece, suggesting the names of several well-known actresses ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... sweet, methinks the voice of waters falling From cliffs that echo back their murmurous song; Less sweet the summer sound of breezes calling Through pine-tree tops sonorous all day long; Than are thy rhymes, the soul of grief enthralling, Thy rhymes o'er field and forest borne along: If she but hear them, at thy feet she'll fawn.— Lo, Thyrsis, hurrying homeward from ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... strong casts from time to time and exciting performances at our local theatres, no one will deny; but perhaps the inhabitants of Turon never witnessed a more enthralling melodrama than was played during the first two days of our race meeting before a crowded and critical audience, and never, we can state from a somewhat extended experience of matters dramatic, did they gaze on a more finished actor than the gentleman who performed ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... you to switch yourself from the crime of that enthralling character to a commonplace ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... speak of his betting transactions. He had denied taking the money—that was but natural; he had been forced to admit replacing it—that was conclusive. Indeed it seemed a waste of time to investigate further; it was utterly impossible to doubt his guilt. Mesh by mesh, like an enthralling net, all the different threads of convicting circumstances were drawn about the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... gallant bearing, yet on this head he was not very communicative. Mystery begets wonder and excitement—a sort of interest usually attached to subjects not easily understood. When it emanates from an object capable of enthralling the affections, this feeling soon kindles admiration, and admiration ripens into love. No wonder, then, if all tender and compassionate dames were ready to open upon him their dread artillery of sighs and glances, and the more especially as it soon began to be manifest that success was nigh hopeless. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Selfishness of the Money Power at the North, and the Slave Power at the South, and persuaded the controlling men of Boston to steal Mr. Sims and Mr. Burns. In 1836 they sought to enslave a poor little orphan girl, and restore bondage to Massachusetts; in 1851 they succeeded in enthralling a man. Now, Gentlemen, they are seeking to sew up the mouth of New England; there is a sad consistency in ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... one such story as that my memory so dimly, yet splendidly recalls, without having made himself immortal. In sober truth, I do not believe that any man, whatever, in any time or country, ever wrote a story quite as enthralling and as wonderful as I thought the Mandans Revenge to be. The curious part about this recollection to me is, not that I should have found so intense a joy in what was probably a very commonplace piece of hackwork, but that the faculty of reading at all was, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... figures of the American Revolution and the romantic personage of Byron's day, Miss Rives has turned to the here and now. And in the present she finds for her immense and brilliant talent a tale as dramatic and enthralling as any of the storied past. The career of the Rev. Harry Sanderson, known as "Satan" in his college days, who sowed the wind to reap the whirlwind and won at last through strangest penance the prize of love, seizes the reader in the strait grip of its feverish interest. Miss Rives has outdone ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... He enjoyed what was worth more than all that ambition backed by wealth and power can give—that is, the faithful love of a beautiful woman, loved truly in return. This boy was loved by one who was capable with her witching loveliness of satisfying every desire, enthralling the imagination, rousing in the heart that passion which inspires the mind to regions where it throbs in harmony with the Divine, and touches—as might some dying desert-waif with his parched lips a cooling fountain—the very source of ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... these things before I stumbled on old Perrelli? Have you ever tried to annotate a classic, Mr. Heard? I assure you it opens up new vistas, new realms of delight. It gives one a genuine zest in life. Enthralling!" ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... of war. Perhaps, but not its enthralling and horrible fascination. Knowing what the target is, knowing the object of the fire, hearing the scream of the projectile on the way and watching to see if it is to be a hit, when the British are fighting the Germans on the ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... San Francisco enthralling, but a fire swept away the new city, and tent-life was accepted as one of many picturesque experiences. Soon, however, the Doctor's shingle ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... witnessed such an utter confusion in her laws, or a specimen that so completely bids defiance to the distinctions of class and genera. Let me record its appearance," fumbling for his tablets with hands that trembled too much to perform their office, "while time and opportunity are allowed—eyes, enthralling; colour, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... "Now there are two separate romances of our ocean-going ships. The first one is of the sailing vessels and is a chronicle of adventure and bravery as enthralling as any you could wish to read. I wish I had time to tell it to you in full and do it justice, but I fear I can only sketch in a few of the facts and leave you to read the rest by yourself some time. You probably know already that whalers went out from Gloucester, New Bedford, and various ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... Maurice Hewlett's The Forest Lovers stands out with conspicuous success.... There are few books of this season which achieve their aim so simply and whole-heartedly as Mr. Hewlett's ingenious and enthralling romance." ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... their woodland fragrance. Its motive, bluntly disclosed in the wager scene, seems coarse, unnatural, and offensive. Its plot, really simple, moves heavily and perplexes attention. It is a piece that lacks pervasive concentration and enthralling point. It might be defined as Othello with a difference—the difference being in favour of Othello. Jealousy is the pivot of both: but in Othello jealousy is treated with profound and searching truth, with terrible ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... New England that the tea-party reached its highest importance as a social function, and in the New England of more than a century ago. Then and there were the weightiest themes of religion and philosophy of such enthralling interest and so interwoven with the practical affairs of men, that they were familiarly discussed all the way from the pulpit and desk to the household and tea-table, and were liable to be brought forward at the table of the artisan, the farmer, or the shopkeeper, as well as at that ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... accordingly everywhere sought to bring literature into closer conformity with reality; with reality as interpreted by science; and to make art severe and precise. In the novel, Flaubert founded modern naturalism with his enthralling picture of dull provincials, Mme Bovary (1857); two years later George Eliot tilted openly in Adam Bede against the romancers who put you off with marvellous pictures of dragons, but could not draw the real horses and ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... saints and holy men; even the names of the thrice blessed apostles, John and James, have been in this fashion abused; but if it be true that the spirits of evil may even in our day as of old embody themselves in mortal shape for the better enthralling and destruction of mankind, then should I prefer to believe that these persons were no other than the evil demons who ruled in Ashdod and Assyria. Such is their perseverance in evil—such their busy industry, which keeps a ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... afternoon!—that prosperous wife, Mrs John Brown, who had once been Bessie Christian. She was a very pale apparition now to the doctor, engrossed as he was with an influence much more imperious and enthralling than hers had ever been; but the sight of her, on this day of all others, was not without its effect upon Edward Rider. Had not she too been burdened with responsibilities which the doctor would not venture to take upon his ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... we revelled in the glories visible from our balcony, and thoroughly enjoyed the charms of the Northern night. Midnight suns must be seen to be understood, the gorgeous lights are enthralling. Our souls were steeped ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... in my arms, I kissed her in feverish haste and tore myself from the enthralling lure of ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... within us, more than a stammering of those to whom unconsciousness does not lend distinction but intensifies idiosyncrasy? Drama, in its essence, requires no speech; it can be played by marionettes, or in dumb show, and be enthralling. But, speech once admitted, must not that speech, if it is to collaborate in supreme drama, be filled with imagination, be itself a beautiful thing? To Ibsen beauty has always been of the nature of an ornament, not an end. He would concentrate it ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... said to have begun some years back, and to be very enthralling. No one objected, least of all the husband, who worshiped at the shrine of the blooming Bernardini when she quarreled with Civilla. A lady of fashion has a choice of lovers, as she has a choice of dresses—for ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... openly disapproving of the foibles of the others. Unfortunately the hobby had grown up with her. As she was rich, influential, and very, very kind, most people were content to count their early tea as well lost on her behalf. Still, the necessity for hurriedly dropping the discussion of an enthralling topic, and suppressing all mention of it during her presence on the scene, was an affliction at a moment like the present, when time was slipping away and indecision ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... than to be mastered by them. He had no shrewdness, in any commercial sense, and very little knowledge of the small practical details of ordinary living. He was always intense, always absorbed. When he applied his mind to a problem, it became at once an enthralling arena, in which there went whirling a chariot-race of ideas ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... in some strange, enthralling way, she held him still. At rare intervals, she came again to him in dreams; or when he hovered on the verge of sleep. Dreams, or visions—they persisted as clearly in memory as any waking act; and unfailingly left a vivid after-sense ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the old love and clings steadfastly to him because, because—I know not why. A woman's loving heart does not question motives and laws. Besides, he is the father of her children and, in playing with them, he regains the old joyousness of mood so enthralling to the heart. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with Lord Byron. He occupied himself during this voyage by reading the "Nouvelle Heloise" for the first time. The reading it on the very spot where the scenes are laid added to the interest; and he was at once surprised and charmed by the passionate eloquence and earnest enthralling interest that pervade this work. There was something in the character of Saint-Preux, in his abnegation of self, and in the worship he paid to Love, that coincided with Shelley's own disposition; and, though differing ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... of two young English knight-errants, twin brothers, whose family motto gives the title to the book. The Spanish maid, the heroine of the romance, is a delightful characterization, and the love story, with its surprising yet logical denouement, is enthralling. ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... his enthralling belief in the succession of peoples who have risen and died—the succeeding world-races, red, black, yellow, and white, which have in turn dominated this planet. Science with its hammer and chisel may lay bare evidence, may collate material, date man's appearance, call him ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... smooth-shaven chin belonging to the recently arrived principal of the village school. In spite of her stern admonition to herself to remember her years and not quite lose her head, she was fast drifting into a rosy dream of romance that was all the more enthralling because so belated, when the summons of a small boy brought her ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... should not tell you this story at all. I should say to myself, "No! It is a good story, it is a moral story, it is a strange, weird, enthralling sort of a story; and the public, I know, would like to hear it; and I should like to tell it to them; but it is all about myself—about what I said, and what I saw, and what I did, and I cannot do it. My retiring, anti-egotistical nature ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... home to ourselves. He proclaims the essential merits of conviction, and of selection. He sets before us the noblest examples of the past, most welcome in a straining age which tries already to live in the future. He admonishes and he inspires. He knows the "marvellous power and enthralling charm of appropriate and striking words" without dropping into mere word-tasting. "Beautiful words are the very light of thought," he says, but does not maunder about the "colour" of words, in the style of the decadence. ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... manoeuvres; whose voices were heard no more in chambers of legislation, lashing partisan feeling to a height of cruelty or lulling a storm among rebellious followers; whose intellects no longer devised vast schemes of finance, or applied secrets of science to transform industry—these heard the enthralling cry of a soul with the darkness of eternal loss gathering upon it, and drew back within themselves; for they too had cried like this one time or another in their lives. Stricken, they had cried out, and ambition had fled away, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... my spirits rose at the thought. What in this world is more enthralling than the meeting of an unknown adversary upon the open field, and jousting him a tourney. I felt like some modern Robin Hood facing the panoplied ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... first he stumbled a little, and had to be prompted in hoarse whispers by Phillis (who apparently had heard the story several times before); but as the narrative progressed and the adventures of the wee bit lassie grew more enthralling and the Kelpie more terrifying, he became almost as immersed as his audience. When I peeped through the curtain they were both sitting on the hearth-rug pressed close together, Phillis gripping one of Robin's enormous hands in a pleasurable ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... Mrs. Renshaw, is a graphic and enthralling venture into the realm of nocturnal unreality. The free play of active imagination, the distorted and transitory conceptions and apparitions, and the strangely elusive analogies, all lend charm and color to this happy portrayal ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... of the bed of wood-coal and the orange yellow of the flame from the big logs filled the room with warm light, which made a mellow background for the figure of the old woman as she sat in her low chair and told them more and more enthralling stories. ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Government, he accepted with evident reluctance the position of Secretary of State which Washington offered to him. In the Cabinet his chief adversary or competitor was Alexander Hamilton, his junior by fourteen years, a man equally versatile and equally facile—and still more enthralling as an orator. Hamilton harbored the anxiety that the United States under their new Constitution would be too loosely held together. He promoted, therefore, every measure that tended to strengthen the Central Government and to save it ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... magnificent sketch of Louis and the fine one of Charles; he has given a more than passable hero in Quentin, and a very agreeable if not ravishing heroine in Isabelle. Above all, he has victoriously shown his old faculty of conducting the story with such a series of enthralling, even if sometimes episodic passages, that nobody but a pedant of 'construction' would care to inquire too narrowly whether they actually make a whole. Quentin's meeting with the King and his rescue from Tristan by the archers; the interviews between Louis and Crevecoeur, and Louis and ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... but its species. When I saw this I turned with threefold concentration of desire and love towards that expression of hope which is called beauty, such as is worked in marble here. For I think beauty is truthfully an expression of hope, and that is why it is so enthralling—because while the heart is absorbed in its contemplation, unconscious but powerful hope is filling the breast. So powerful is it as to banish for the time all care, and to make this life seem the life of ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Gilfoyle was assailed by an epilepsy of inspirations. In place of "Kalteyer's Peerless Gum," he proposed the enthralling title, "Breathasweeta." Others had mixed pepsin in their edible rubber goods of various flavors. Gilfoyle ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes |
